Crucial MX100 Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
An excellent mainstream SSD, the MX100 has a performance-for-price equation that tops today's field. For 256GB and higher capacities, this is the SSD most mainstream buyers should get. Read More…

What We Liked…

Priced lower than Samsung’s excellent SSD 840 EVO

Very fast small-file writes

Performed well overall

What We Didn’t…

Lagged a bit on our real-world file-copy test

Not available in 1TB capacity

Crucial MX100 Review

Table of Contents

Introduction

For nearly a year now, Samsung’s SSD 840 EVO has been an easy pick for the best solid-state drive (SSD) for mainstream buyers. With its very good performance and a price that undercut just about every big-name drive maker on the market, it was hard to recommend anything else unless you needed absolute top-notch speeds or a longer warranty—and were willing to pay a fair bit extra for it.

But the SSD 840 EVO now has some very strong competition in Crucial’s MX100 mainstream line of drives. The MX100’s performance didn't surge ahead of the SSD 840 EVO’s showing on our benchmark tests, but the two drives were quite competitive on most of them, to the point that you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two without splitting hairs within benchmark utilities. What sets the Crucial MX100 apart is the same thing that drove the SSD 840 EVO to earn our Editors' Choice award in 2013: very good performance at a price that undercuts the competition.

We tested two capacities of the MX100 family: 256GB and 512GB. At these two sizes, the MX100 shaves off $20 and $40, respectively, from the prices of the comparable-capacity Samsung SSD 840 EVO drives. Even the 128GB model of Crucial’s drive, at around $75, is about $15 cheaper than the 120GB version of the SSD 840 EVO. Note, though, that the 128GB model of the Crucial MX100 has much slower rated sequential write speeds than the rest of the MX100 family.

One other thing to note about the MX100: At the time we wrote this (in mid-August 2014), this drive family didn't have a 1TB-capacity member. But Crucial has that capacity covered by its similar, speedier Crucial M550 drive line. Pricing on the 1TB version of the M550 also generally undercut the 1TB SSD 840 EVO at this writing—sometimes by as much as $30. But shop around before buying, as SSD prices are always in flux and can vary a good bit among e-sellers.

Unless the pricing winds shift in the coming months in favor of Samsung’s SSD 840 EVO, Crucial’s MX100 will be our top pick for mainstream users looking to step up from a hard drive or upgrade an SSD that’s been in use for a few years.

Enthusiasts and professionals who want the absolute fastest speed—and warranty coverage that lasts longer than the three years of the MX100 drives—may want to consider Samsung’s newer SSD 850 Pro instead. We reviewed the SSD 850 Pro just before this drive, and it was simply the fastest SATA-based drive we’ve tested. Plus, it comes with a staggering decade-long warranty. But the pricing at comparable capacities was much higher.

Alternatively, you could wait to see if and when Samsung decides to launch an 850-series version of its SSD EVO drive family. We've heard no official word yet whether an SSD 850 EVO will be in the offing, but the company did reveal recently that it is producing TLC V-NAND, which combines the endurance-extending 3D cell-stacking process of the SSD 850 Pro with the cost-cutting triple-layer cell (TLC) technology used in the SSD 840 EVO drive. (Hit this SSD 840 EVO review link for more on the technology.) So while Crucial’s MX100 drive is our current favorite mainstream drive, it may not hold that title for long. But, at the very least, it should remain among the best buys for value-conscious SSDs buyers for some time.